“Always ensure your tie is correctly adjusted in length to avoid exposing any of those old insecurities.”

from an Internet Necktie Knot page

Next Spring I’m going to propose to the faculty that ties should be banned from regular classrooms, along with the spiked dog collar necklaces and beer-commercial t-shirts that the faculty decided to ban last year. I hate ties. I wear them and don’t usually complain. I have even been known to defend them, for strictly rhetorical purposes. But the truth is I’ve always found them uncomfortable, pointless, and worse than pointless. They’re distasteful.

Why don’t more people notice that ties are arrow-shaped, subliminally directing attention to the wearer’s genitalia? More to the point, of course, ties resemble male genitalia. This is the reason we wear them, though I’ve never heard anybody admit it: we hang a symbol around our necks to remind people (read: women) of what’s hanging in our pants. Conscious or not, ties are a symbol of male domination, and as such have no place in an educational institution.

It occurred to me only today that tie fashion triangulates this perception. I did a little research. Neckties as we know them, as opposed to “cravats” or “stocks”, didn’t emerge until the late 1800's, when women first started to do wacky things like get into higher education. They did not become obviously phallic until the first successes of the suffragettes. Ties first bloomed in this country in the early 1920's, precisely when women won the right to vote.

Ties kept growing through the depression, and by the outbreak of World War II they had both reached the waist and grown to four inches wide. Immediately after the war ties started to shrink and almost went out of style. Women, of course, had enjoyed increasing freedom and power during the prewar period, culminating in Rosie the Riveter’s almost equal acceptance in the workplace. Men forcefully reasserted themselves in many ways after the war, and no longer needed symbols of their domination.

Ties did not altogether disappear. Women stayed home and no one was concerned with the symbols of masculinity. Ties stayed short and thin through the fifties. It was in the sixties, when young people started challenging the mores of their suburban, nuclear family structure, that ties once again began to grow. And grow. And grow. Until in the early and mid-seventies, when the women were burning their bras and the liberation movement was at its height, ties not only averaged six inches wide but sported day-glo colors.

Finally, when ties couldn’t get any more obvious, the ERA went up in smoke. Men and tie designers breathed a sigh of relief: women’s equality would not become legally binding. Ties immediately started to shrink. Today, women still play an increasingly important role in what were formerly male-dominated areas, such as big business and construction. But their pay is lousy and terms like “chick” are once again stylish. Ties are full length, but only moderate in width.

At best, we wear ties as a symbol that says “Respect me”. But history shows us that we only demand respect in this way when it’s lacking in other ways. The symbol implies a fear of losing the real thing. I would argue that respect is something that should be assumed, but that its maintenance is our continuous responsibility. In other words, ties should not be a substitute for earning or maintaining respect. In a school like Darrow we should be earning it. The symbol works against our purpose.

We have other less involved reasons to rid ourselves of ties. Gary [ceramics], Walt [athletics], and Dean [grounds] typically ignore the necktie expectation because it’s inconsistent with their work, but we should be consistent as a faculty. Along the same lines, at least two visitors to our campus this year have remarked how shabby our female teachers look in relation to the men. But they’ve emphasized that the women are dressed fine: it’s the men who are over-dressed. Should it be Darrow policy that male faculty be respected as authority figures, and women not?

Occasionally we suit up and wear ties not to demand respect, but to pay it. I’m thinking about funerals, school awards ceremonies, and Parent’s Days. It’s stupid, but perhaps it doesn’t do any harm. Administrators could wear ties. The rest of us should wear them on special occasions, but never in the classroom.

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philes/ties.html; written/revised 01 September 2011
copyleft 2011 James Gosselink